Walter Maciel Gallery is pleased to present new work by
Oakland based artist Lisa Solomon. The show includes new
stitched\, graphite and mixed media drawings and marks Solomon’s first sol
o show at the gallery. Her work was first introduced in 2008 in the three
person exhibition Pattern Redefined.

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Within her new series Solom
on explores her heritage both personally and historically within thoughtful
ly rendered mixed media collage drawings organized into four distinct serie
s that intersect under the premise of migration. The first grouping depicts
portraits of the artist and her immediate family using collaged paper\, st
itched thread\, drawn line and felt cutouts. Rather than representing each
person in a figurative gesture\, Solomon creates the portraits using geogr
aphic information based on each person’s migration from one location to the
next as well as information relating to each person’s interests and person
ality. For instance\, the drawing Ocasan shows the history and mapp
ing of her mother’s life journey from Japan to the US. At the top of the dr
awing red threads track the miles between the two cities her mother lived i
n Japan (which is faintly painted in white). A series of pin pricks indicat
es the miles traveled to California. An image of an abacus clues into the c
alculation of the actual miles while an image of poppy flowers references t
he state as well as Solomon’s mother as an avid gardener. The series also
details the life experience of herself from Southern to Northern California
\, her husband from Boston to California\, her father from the Midwest to C
alifornia via Japan and her grandparents who were both born into Jewish imm
igrant families.

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The second series exists as 38 individual black graphi
te drawings on graph paper configured into a grid installation. Each drawi
ng includes a unique version of a color chart perhaps alluding to the diffe
rent colors that may have been used to complete the work. The grids of col
or stem from Solomon’s experience teaching color theory at California Colle
ge of the Arts. Initially these drawings were made as quick studies to be
used as information in the portrait series but as they evolved the relation
ships between each piece became more interesting as a complete group. All
of the subjects personally relate to Solomon and her interests: some repres
ent places she has been while other are objects that have meaning to her. M
any of these renderings are direct representations of photos juxtaposed wit
h iconic subjects such as state birds and flowers. The third series comment
s on a more macro view of migration in which Solomon researched topics that
related directly to her Japanese heritage. In WWII the Japanese developed
and launched 9300 FU-GO’s balloon bombs from six launching pads to be sent
via jet streams. While mostly ineffective with only six lives lost\, the g
overnment was highly effective in keeping these attacks quiet to avoid pani
c. The US press cooperated and thus the Japanese stopped the launches six m
onths after they started. The series consists of a felt map of the US deta
iling all of the locales where collected parts and pieces of balloon bombs
landed in the lower 48 states. Referencing traditional red dotted lines us
ed in historical war books to indicated bomb targets on maps\, the drawings
are rendered in a similar red to represent the jet streams and the distanc
es that the bombs actually traveled from various launching cities to the lo
cales in the US. The red is also intentionally reminiscent of the red circ
le of the Japanese flag.

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Lastly\, the fourth series depicts the migrat
ion of radiation surrounding the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant over the s
pan of a year. Solomon has family that still resides in that region (as wel
l as friends scattered all through Japan) and found herself continually won
dering about the effects of the radiation fall out. Using embroidery to map
radiation readings the colors used and the length of the stitch indicate t
he relevant “safety” of the amount of radiation. There are four drawings sh
owing readings 5 days\, 1 month\, 6 months and 1 year from the March 11\, 2
011 earthquake. Alongside these drawings will be an installation of a croch
et doily color key.

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Solomon did her undergraduate studies at UC Ber
keley and received her MFA from Mills College. She is an adjunct professor
at San Francisco State University and has taught in the past at California
State University\, East Bay and California College of the Arts. Solomon r
ecently had her first solo show in Europe at Nicoletta Rusconi Gallery in M
ilan. Last year she was included in the Cheongju International Craft Bienn
ale in Seoul and in 2007 she presented a beautiful installation at the Koum
i Museum in Nagano\, Japan. Her most recent solo show in Southern Californ
ia was entitled where have all the trees gone at Angel’s Gate in San
Pedro.